Matters of chemistry. Primo Levi, Freud and the temporary repair

Abstract

By a Primo Levi’s analogy between the writer’s trade and the chemist’s one, his first and «unique» profession, and a Freud’s analogy between the chemist’s trade and the psychoanalyst’s one, the text shows some aspects of the therapeutic potential of writing. Levi pointed out some of his books as replacements for «Freud’s couch»: the writer can indeed rework his orginal material, the experience, in a new and healthier balance; in the same way the chemist can develop a new synthesis for a compound or the psychoanalyst recreate a new psychic order in his patient; in all cases, however, the single elements prove to be hard to manage, unpredicatable, and the outcomes hard to foresee.